Board index Photography Technical Questions Question about Digital Panoramic Exposures

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Question about Digital Panoramic Exposures

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a_zeitler
 
Posts: 458

Question about Digital Panoramic Exposures

Post Thu Jul 05, 2007 11:32 pm


I have one main concern that I feel I need to grasp before I fully understand the Panoramic photo aspect. I constantly get several shots that are slightly different in exposure. By this I mean the sky would be darker or lighter in two images when placed side by side. I have tried two steps to get around this:

First I tried to use the AE-L/AF-L button so that the camera does not refocus nor adjust the exposure. I still got the differences in exposure.

Second I got an exposure that I was happy with, used the auto focus to focus, the switched the focus knob to manual. (this was to assure that the images were in focus and that the lens would not adjust itself at all.) When that was done, I set the desired exposure manually... using the manual mode (where I set the aperture, ISO, shutter, etc..). Even then I got the slight variations between images.

I know that the light is constantly changing but I notice these variations on the panos I try and do during the day and they are all taken with in seconds of each other. I am using a tripod and a Manfrotto 303plus QTVR pano head, a Nikon D-200 with a Nikkon 28-105 lens (mm length varies between pano). I have tried a couple different lenses (85mm 1.8, 50mm 1.8, 19-35mm) and still get the same result. I am also shooting in Matrix metering mode.


Anyone have any suggestions on how to correct this problem?

madlights
 
Posts: 914


Post Fri Jul 06, 2007 5:23 am


I thought it was just me...I've had this happen with both my Canon 10d and my Olympus 8080. Most times it works fine either on manual, or pressing the lock button...but sometimes it seems like no matter what is done there are enough variations to make it almost impossible to correct without a lot of work in Photoshop after the pano is stitched , if then. I'm curious also.

gemmf
 
Posts: 903


Post Fri Jul 06, 2007 7:08 am


Could it be because the colour of the sky's different across the sky? I would allow a lot of overlapped areas, so that the transformation would look more natural.

noshoot
 
Posts: 5


Post Fri Jul 06, 2007 2:58 pm


By going to full manual you are on the right track, but you still have some variables you need to get under control. On the D200 go to the shooting menu, select Optimize Image, then Custom, now set Tone Compensation and Saturation to Normal. The default is Auto, so if you don’t change these settings to Normal, the camera will select the best tone curve and saturation for each picture. You can save these settings to one of the four shooting banks and name it Pano (this is what I’ve done). Then all you have to do is select the appropriate shooting bank (A, B, C, or D), and not have to worry about those settings. Oh, one more thing. If you are shooting with a polarizer, you need to remove it while shooting panos.

a_zeitler
 
Posts: 458


Post Sat Jul 07, 2007 5:25 pm


noshoot - I will have to try what you say. I do not know the ins and outs of the camera that well and I really don't know anyone that does know them that well to show me. But what you are saying seems to explain my problem. Someone told me to shoot them in raw and do the adjustments then, but I cannot figure out how to get two raw images side by side to adjust them accordingly. I think with this particular pano I shot with a polarizer... not 100% sure. I have three sets of photos of this scene at different times/settings.

Here is an example of what I am having troubles with. It is a more drastic result but it should point out my problem. The image on the right was shot first then I paned to the left and took the left image, all within 10 seconds of the other one. These two images were untouched, taken off the card and roughly aligned in photoshop. I didn't do anything else to them.

Image

thazooo
 
Posts: 51


Post Sun Jul 08, 2007 9:28 pm


Here's an interesting tutorial regarding panos and PS.

http://www.creativepro.com/story/howto/20975.html

ernst
 
Posts: 537
Location: Maastricht, Netherlands


Post Wed Jul 11, 2007 12:37 pm


Don't forget to set the white balance to a fixed value, i.e. anything else than 'auto'. Although perhaps not the correct white balance, at least all photos have the same deviation. Assuming you shoot RAW, it is easily corrected afterwards in the raw converter, together with exposure. (select all photos before applying the correction!)


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